Kobo eBook available

This Is Not The End Of The Book

Product Details

The perfect gift for book lovers: a beautifully designed hardcover in which two of the world''s great men have a delightfully rambling conversation about the future of the book in the digital era, and decide it is here to stay.

These days it is almost impossible to get away from discussions of whether the book will survive the digital revolution. Blogs, tweets and newspaper articles appear daily on the subject, many of them repetitive, most of them admitting they don''t know what will happen. Amidst the twittering, the thoughts of Jean-Claude Carrière and Umberto Eco come as a breath of fresh air. There are few people better placed to discuss the past, present and future of the book. Both of them avid book collectors with a deep understanding of history, they have explored through their work, both written and visual, the many and varied ways in which ideas have been represented through the ages.

This beautifully produced book, an object of desire in itself, is the transcription of a long conversation between the two men in which they discuss a vast range of subjects, from what can be defined as the first book, to the idea of the library, the burning of books both accidental and deliberate, and what will happen to knowledge and memory when infinite amounts of information are available at the click of a mouse. En route there are delightful digressions into personal anecdote about everything from Eco''s first computer to the book Carrière is most sad to have sold.

Readers will close this book feeling that they have had the privilege of eavesdropping on an intimate discussion between two great minds. And while, as Carrière says, the one certain thing about the future is that it is unpredictable, it is clear from this conversation that, in some form or other, the book will survive. After all, as Eco says: like the spoon, once invented, it cannot be bettered.

Reviews

– More About This Product –

This Is Not The End Of The Book

The following ISBNs are associated with this title:

ISBN - 10: 1846554519

ISBN - 13: 9781846554513

From the Publisher

The perfect gift for book lovers: a beautifully designed hardcover in which two of the world''s great men have a delightfully rambling conversation about the future of the book in the digital era, and decide it is here to stay.

These days it is almost impossible to get away from discussions of whether the book will survive the digital revolution. Blogs, tweets and newspaper articles appear daily on the subject, many of them repetitive, most of them admitting they don''t know what will happen. Amidst the twittering, the thoughts of Jean-Claude Carri&egrave;re and Umberto Eco come as a breath of fresh air. There are few people better placed to discuss the past, present and future of the book. Both of them avid book collectors with a deep understanding of history, they have explored through their work, both written and visual, the many and varied ways in which ideas have been represented through the ages.

This beautifully produced book, an object of desire in itself, is the transcription of a long conversation between the two men in which they discuss a vast range of subjects, from what can be defined as the first book, to the idea of the library, the burning of books both accidental and deliberate, and what will happen to knowledge and memory when infinite amounts of information are available at the click of a mouse. En route there are delightful digressions into personal anecdote about everything from Eco''s first computer to the book Carri&egrave;re is most sad to have sold.

Readers will close this book feeling that they have had the privilege of eavesdropping on an intimate discussion between two great minds. And while, as Carri&egrave;re says, the one certain thing about the future is that it is unpredictable, it is clear from this conversation that, in some form or other, the book will survive. After all, as Eco says: like the spoon, once invented, it cannot be bettered.

About the Author

UMBERTO ECO has written works of fiction, literary criticism and philosophy. He came to fame with his first novel The Name of the Rose, a major international bestseller, and has since published four other novels, along with many brilliant books of essays. His sixth novel, The Prague Cemetery, is due out from Harvill Secker in 2012.

JEAN-CLAUDE CARRI&Egrave;RE is a writer, playwright and screenwriter. He has worked with Peter Brook, Milos Forman, Bu&ntilde;uel, Godard and the Dala&iuml; Lama, and is the author of Please Mr Einstein as well as the co-author, along with Umberto Eco and Stephen Jay Gould, of Conversations About the End of Time.

Editorial Reviews

"A storming book. The next best thing to sitting in Umberto Eco''s living room after dinner; a dream collection of lucid and fascinating discussions." &mdash;Nick Harkaway&#160;"An entertainingly free-range dialogue about writing past, present and future." &mdash;Boyd Tonkin, Independent